


Time Spiral

by LittleJustices



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Chaos Theory 101, Gen, Pretentious, Timey-Wimey, playing with the relationship between Yukari and Maribel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26457277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleJustices/pseuds/LittleJustices
Summary: Imagine this meeting: Two hobbyist supernatural investigators, on the tail of some mystery. Their search ultimately leads them to a woman, and this woman is clearly not human. She moves through gaps and lives in between. (I am not forgetting to specify between what and what.)But this woman is familiar to both of our researchers. She’s the spitting image of one of them, in fact.And she says, “I have missed you so badly.”If you’ll indulge me, let’s examine three of the ways this meeting will play out.
Relationships: Maribel Hearn/Usami Renko, Maribel Hearn/Yakumo Yukari, Usami Renko/Yakumo Yukari
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	1. Yes or No

Consider the first scenario. In this, Usami Renko and Maribel Hearn have tracked down the source of certain photos and documents in the former’s possession. Ultimately, they (as well as Renko’s favorite hat) came from a relative of hers, Sumireko, though Renko’s never met her and they were not inherited. They passed through a convoluted chain of custody involving online friendships, trusted acquaintances, and train station lockers until they ended up in a younger Renko’s hands and taught her about the first Sealing Club.

Finally, they find a lynchpin of the network in a small office in Ikebukuro. She doesn’t seem to have been part of the chain at any point, but she is a common thread in the accounts they’ve been able to dig up. It’s not clear what company the office belongs to or what its purpose is. The nameplate on the door says Yakumo. Of course, we already know who this is, but Renko and Maribel do not.

An automatic secretary confirms Yakumo Yukari happens to be in. They find her waiting behind a desk and freeze. Renko takes one look and looks at her companion, as if to confirm what she’s seeing. The same blonde hair, though longer; the same face, maybe older; same general build; the very same eyes (but at the same time, very different); even the same dark purple shade of clothing, though Yakumo wears a suit and Maribel a dress.

They meet and Yakumo makes it no secret that she’s deeply involved with the supernatural, though she’s frustratingly vague on the specifics. She’s quite unlike Maribel in attitude, at least, though there’s a hint of haughtiness that they share. But Yakumo pairs this with casual confidence that almost verges into playfulness. Maribel’s comes from understanding the world in ways most others don’t, but the world she lives in doesn’t reward confidence in the things she knows.

In this version of events, Yakumo addresses Renko and tells her, “I’ve missed you so badly,” with genuine emotion. It catches both others off guard because it is the most sincere, vulnerable thing she has said for the entire conversation.

Renko is intrigued. Mind you, following this conversation, everything doesn’t play out on the same afternoon. Yakumo Yukari is not in the habit of volunteering cut and dry answers, but she stays in touch. Over the next few months, Yakumo and the amateur investigators will interact more often, in person and digitally, sometimes all three, sometimes one on one.

It’s not just the question of what Yakumo’s—no, she wants to be “Yukari”—what Yukari’s relation to Maribel is. (A few times, Renko calls her “Mary” by accident and is very embarrassed, but Yukari doesn’t seem to mind.) She knows so many more things, has seen so many places (and has the memories to prove it), more than could logically fit in a lifetime. And she knows how to tease, how to teach, and how to teach by teasing, giving just enough hints until you put the conclusion together yourself. She only gives answers that raise more questions, but that’s the thing about being a scientist: Those are the _best_ kind of answer.

It’s not as though Yukari is leading Renko by the nose: She _has_ missed Renko. Here is the rare kind of person whose first reaction to something she doesn’t understand is “tell me more”, not “I don’t get it”. This is, of course, also what Maribel sees in her.

Now, in this case, I don’t think Renko and Maribel are quite an item. There’s chemistry, of course, as there always is. There’s interest, and given time a deeper relationship would almost certainly develop. But they haven’t quite allowed themselves to think about that, yet. I don’t know it for a fact, but that’s what I believe. I don’t think a Yakumo Yukari who seeks out what she once loved in a person, who can say “I’ve missed you” and _mean_ it, would be callous enough to drive a wedge into an established relationship for her own sake.

It’s just, it has been _so long_.

Maribel grows frustrated—less with Renko and more with Yakumo, and herself. With Yakumo, for blatantly flirting with Maribel’s friend in front of her eyes. With herself, for being too much of a mess to muster that kind of confidence. Obviously, it’s not her place to police who Renko talks to or what she does. But she’s allowed to feel jealous, isn’t she?

She wants to know who Yakumo really is as much as Renko does, but her annoyance pushes her to care less, just out of spite. Her doppelganger clearly enjoys leaving people guessing, so Maribel hates to give her the satisfaction. Once, she asks straight out,

“Are you me?”

To which Yakumo smiles and says, “An excellent question. Very astute.”

“And the answer? Yes or no?”

“I don’t deal in ‘yes or no’, Miss Hearn. Neither do you.”

Sometimes, Renko goes missing for some days and comes back excited to tell Maribel about what she’s learned. She knows better than to go on about who she was with, but Maribel can guess. The first several times, she invited Maribel along, but as her friend’s reluctance grew she started splitting her time between club activities and talking to Yukari. Every researcher worth their salt (not that many are, in this time) loves the unknown, but as a rule, it doesn’t love you back. What researcher can say the unknown took their hand, kissed them on the lips, and said, “Come with me”?

Renko fully intends to stay friends with Maribel, and Yukari does not try to make her forget or anything. She’s known and loved gods, ghosts, and shrine maidens. She tells Renko about some of them, and maybe tells Maribel too, if the latter is willing to hear. Some have understood, some haven’t, but Renko was always the one who kept asking. Who discussed and put names to things, helping her pin down things she understood but couldn’t speak. (Both Yukari and Maribel have always been bad with names.)

It has been _so long_.

As far as Maribel goes, she could give up, but that wouldn’t make for much of a case study, which is why I picked a case where that doesn’t happen. After all, Renko isn’t the only one afflicted with terminal curiosity. Maribel is every bit as much addicted to mysteries. Now, additionally, she feels she’s losing something she took for granted. Yakumo knows much more about crossing boundaries, but Maribel can figure it out as she goes.

So one time, when Renko is gone, Maribel goes to find her. How hard can it be? Well, very hard. But she does figure it out, eventually. And she figures out so much more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very self-indulgent idea that I suspect will come out a pretentious mess. That's fine. It is very much a "this idea demands I put it down" story more than a "I shall take the time to do this just right" story. I hope you'll indulge my antics.
> 
> Two more parts to follow as I find the time to write them. They will probably not make more sense than this one.


	2. Chapter 2

Consider the second scenario.

You’ll notice this building looks similar to the one we examined last time. In fact, it’s the same address in Ikebukuro, but this office building has been abandoned for a while. That’s nothing too remarkable. This district almost always has the highest proportion of abandoned buildings in the city. (For that matter, most of the building was empty in our first scenario anyway.)

Personally, I like the building like this; it’s very atmospheric. There’s a tree growing on the roof, and the view from there is lovely, if you appreciate a certain “mono no aware” aesthetic.

You’ll remember the trail Maribel and Renko followed to this building in the first version of events. Here, the various documents and photos (and the hat, of course) also went through this building more than once, but whatever hands they passed through have long left. A dead end, but maybe some kind of paper trail was left behind, or a record of who might have worked here. It wouldn’t be unusual for a company to vacate the premises without bothering to clean up after itself, especially if money is short.

(There are also rumors about the tree on the roof, standard “lovers’ tree” stories. You could find any number of those closer to home, so I assume their primary reason for being here really is the investigation at hand, but maybe the tree was in the back of Renko’s mind. She doesn’t end up showing Mary the tree, or mentioning it, though.)

When Renko and Maribel enter the abandoned office around sunset, they run into a woman in a purple dress walking down the hallway.

She steps out of a gap in the air, through which Maribel might see an unfamiliar landscape were she not so distracted by the woman herself.

You can guess, of course, that she sees her own face there. The woman's build is a little different, her hair longer, but the face is a dead match. Especially the eyes.

The woman notices them and pauses, looking at Renko.

“I have missed you so much,” she says.

It’s more spontaneous than a statement meant for Renko. She looks tired, maybe wistful, and at first she takes a step towards the pair. 

Then, she glances at Maribel. Another pause. The woman steps into a wall and is gone.

Who _is_ the woman? Well, yes, she has gone by Yakumo Yukari sometimes, when she needed a pseudonym. Maybe she appreciates the irony. She’s met people who _expected_ her to be Yakumo Yukari, so she was that for them. If you asked her, though, I suspect she would say she’s Maribel Hearn. (For now.)

She seems to keep coming back to this building, though the way it’s significant is slightly different each time. For her, it’s where all this started. Is she trying to recreate that first scenario, but with herself in Yakumo’s role? She did try once, just to see if she could, but with what she’s learned since then, she suspects that’s impossible. The circumstances never match. For one, she is fairly confident she’s still human. (She hasn’t learned to stop thinking in ‘yes or no’ quite yet.)

Here’s the thing. Yakumo Yukari and beings like her are the fears of humanity made flesh. What’s the fear behind her existence? I think it is the fear of ambiguity, of the things that confuse you because you don’t know how to pin them down and understand them. But this is an old fear. One of the oldest. Even if Maribel Hearn falls ten thousand years into the past, she would find this fear has been around for a long time.

Let’s focus back on _this_ Maribel, though, because she has just tried to follow after the strange woman. Would _you_ just watch her leave, if she had your face? She can’t actually bodily step across boundaries (yet?), so she’ll fail, but she can see.

How to describe what she sees? It’s hard enough to describe a single sight at a time. Let’s try this: Have you ever used a zoetrope? A rotating cylinder with slits, through which you can see the images on a strip inside the cylinder, which appear to be animated? Imagine being inside of one, but you are the one spinning. Imagine being inside of two, of four, of sixteen... at the same time. Imagine trying to follow what’s happening in any of them as they cross over and influence each other. Overwhelming, right?

That’s why Maribel wakes up in a hospital.

There’s nothing seriously wrong with her, the doctors say, she should be good to leave after getting some rest. Renko is, of course, there with her, which is the best medicine. Neither says anything to the staff about what happened; they don’t need a repeat of the satellite.

Maribel does tell Renko what she saw, once they’re alone and everything is in order. What she remembers, anyway, which is mostly disjointed visions of that woman which nevertheless seemed to lead into one another. (She compares it to a Snakes and Ladders board, which in retrospect might be a more intuitive metaphor.)

Here she was watching a premodern settlement from afar, casting pebbles into the pond (different ones each time) and observing the ripples.

There she met a high school girl, very much like Renko but a different person, in an older Tokyo, still a metropolis.

Here she was hatching plans with other beings, conducting a ritual of separation. (This one, interestingly, played out almost the same every time.)

There she ran into Maribel and Renko, often both, sometimes either alone, always in abandoned or transitional places.

In between she lies in the arms of a ghost princess, rests her head on a shrine maiden’s shoulder, speaks in riddles with a god who still thinks herself a boy playwright, but Maribel doesn’t mention these moments. They feel private, invasive.

And more, over and over, in uncountable variations.

Immediately they begin talking about what this means. Parallel worlds? It doesn’t ring true to Maribel. Did she almost fall into a time slip? Renko isn’t a fan of the implications, though there are theories.

“Well, good thing you didn’t fall in,” Renko says, “I’d have to invent time travel to get you back.”

They start discussing time travel, more as digression than as a serious notion. A stable time loop, for example, in which this incident sets Maribel on the path to become a time traveler and then shows up in front of herself as the strange woman to complete the cycle. Or parallel worlds, every decision creating new universes for each possible outcome. It still sounds wrong to Maribel, but she can’t quite put her finger on why. It’s too cut and dry for her, I think, too easy an answer.

Renko lays out some obvious problems and paradoxes and alternate theories while Maribel doodles on a touchscreen. It’s not that she isn’t listening; if anything, Renko knows it _helps_ her listen. By the time Renko gets into talking about Kurt Gödel and closed timelike curves, she is starting to lose interest, but her scribbles catch Renko’s attention.

Maribel has taken the circle she drew to represent the stable time loop and turned it into a sort of oblong spiral, then another one next to it, at an angle, without lifting the stylus, slowly adding curves however it pleased her and drawing connections between the spirals to switch. It comes out looking a little like a butterfly shape.

When asked about the pattern, Maribel can only shrug. “I wasn’t really thinking about it. I think I might’ve seen it somewhere before.”

“I know I have,” says Renko, “that’s why I’m wondering.”

“Well, maybe you showed me.”

“More likely you saw it over my shoulder or something.”

“Whatever. So what is it?”

“Well, it looks a lot like a famous solution to a set of equations that are meant to be a simple meteorological model.”

“What do spirals have to do with weather prediction?”

“So, say you’ve got equations for the movement of air and temperature differences in two dimensions. But convection depends on temperature differences and temperature differences change as air moves by convection, right? So all of those equations influence one another. It’s like a three-way feedback loop.”

“So it repeats eventually?”

“That’s the trick. Depending on the conditions, you can get solutions like this, that never repeat exactly, because even if you arrive at a value that’s really close to one you’ve had before, it won’t be the exact same, because the last step was different. And then the next step will also be different because the current one is slightly different. It’s an example of how even a really simplified, totally deterministic system can give you chaotic results. And the real world is obviously way more complicated.”

“I wonder if that’s why she was taking breaks.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s look at that building again.”

Renko laughs quietly. It sounds a little nervous, but Maribel doesn’t pick up on that. Her thoughts are probably elsewhere already. “So soon? You want to be a time traveler?”

“Why not?”

“You keep getting hospitalized.”

“Well, I can’t just forget about it.”

“Of course. Me neither.”

“She was talking to you, Renko,” Maribel says, and I think this is exactly what Renko is anxious about. Does it look like that’s the reason she is interested?

It’s a foregone conclusion, I think, that they go anyway. This time, though, Renko takes Maribel up to the roof to show her that tree first.


	3. Chapter 3

Consider the third scenario. This one will require some background, but that background won’t sound relevant out of context, so we’ll have to jump around a little.

The meeting place is different here. They are at what was once Haneda International Airport—not Shin-Haneda, but the old one, whose runways are now mostly under water to one degree or another. It’s abandoned and closed down, of course; they’re not supposed to be here.

Have you ever been in an airport lobby at night, with almost nobody around? There’s a quality about it that you can _feel_ in the back of your head, isn’t there, the feeling of a place that should be lively but is deserted? This was once in the top five busiest airports in the world, and it has been empty for decades.

There. In front of the departure lobby Maribel stops, staring into a particular shadow in a particular corner.

Now, in and of itself, this isn’t anything new. I couldn’t tell you when Maribel started seeing through gaps in the world, nor could she, I imagine. She certainly started talking about other worlds and fantastic creatures at a young age, but children will do that (less so these days) and adults will go along with it (less so these days). Once these fantasies became inappropriate, parents and school and therapists and all the world would have been quick to teach her that they were just that. Perhaps Maribel’s own mother, who never met a Renko of her own, saw the signs and intervened early.

This instance is a little special. Among all the places, times, and things she’s seen is one that stands out because it isn’t really any of those. For our purposes, that distinction is mostly academic, so just think of it as less another room in the house and more the space inside the wall. I am not sure how she manages to see this. Maybe it’s a particular kind of gap that doesn’t quite go all the way through; maybe it’s psychological, a matter of stopping inside a door frame and considering that you are not really standing in either room.

It’s dark there, of course, since a light source needs a concrete place to exist in, but the darkness looks back at her. This isn’t new either.

She’s always thought the darkness has beautiful eyes. It took her a while to realize they’re the same as her own.

It’s not clear to me if these interactions kept her from learning to forget the difference between her visions and simple daydreams, or if the darkness took an interest because she refused to forget. It’s a chicken-and-egg kind of problem, so perhaps both.

And they _are_ interactions, I think, even though no words are exchanged and Maribel will simply stare into the between and see eyes like hers stare back. A lot can be conveyed with just a look. Maybe she’s spaced out in an empty subway station after a visit to the doctor, staring into the gap between two escalators, and thought that the darkness might understand what it’s like to be told you aren’t real.

Renko soon notices that her partner has stopped and turns to find her staring. To her, this is a good sign, not an annoyance. She says Mary’s name, softly, before taking her hand, to avoid startling her, and asks what she’s seeing. Her hand squeezes Renko’s, but she doesn’t answer.

The darkness smiles and beckons. That _is_ new.

She’s looked into those eyes, and they’ve looked back, many times, with what she imagined to be sympathy, even fondness. But the darkness has never smiled and beckoned before. The darkness has never had a mouth or hands before.

Is it a good idea? Almost certainly not. But I imagine she sees this as a once-in-a-lifetime event, so she steps forward, unconsciously pulling Renko with her, and they walk into the darkness.

Maribel sees only in glimpses there. (“Seeing” is probably a metaphor in the first place.) She can see hair, like her own but longer and messier, and a dress, but not both at once. She doesn’t notice, I don’t think, that the hand holding hers no longer belongs to Renko. She’s too busy looking at her own face, smiling back at her with half-open eyes. 

The darkness-that-is-like-Maribel says, “I have missed you.” 

What about Renko? She’s still being led by the hand, until her companion stops and looks back at her. She _also_ sees Mary’s face, but in clear outline, too clear to be quite real. She sees a cryptic smile that feels like a challenge.

Why the differences? I think they are both projecting. Renko looks at the unknown and sees fascination. 

Maribel sees something of herself she can’t define in full, but she realizes that she too has missed the darkness.

What she asks next will sound familiar: “Are you me?”

The answer doesn’t come right away. She feels two arms embrace her. A hand strokes her head and another is still holding her own hand. I don’t know how comforting this actually is, but when Maribel looks up, the darkness’ face is close, looking at her with sympathy and hurt.

“Look how they’ve poisoned you.”

“Poisoned?”

Another pair of hands cups Maribel’s cheeks. “Must everything fit in a box? Life is chaos, Maribel Hearn. Just ask Renko.”

They lock eyes and Maribel sees.

The best way I can think of to conceptualize this is a deal. (Maybe I’m poisoned, too.) This is what the darkness offers: Affirmation, the concrete realization that what her soul tells her is no less true than what the world around her says; another who understands; so many sights and insights. 

But for that, the darkness would need to be real, not a vague outsider who exists only to occlude or reveal. She needs a counterpart, a second, because she _cannot_ be just one thing. A reflection needs someone standing in front of the mirror.

It’s obviously foolish, right? Who would make such a deal with an unknown entity from in between everything? It flies in the face of common sense.

I think Maribel will take the offer anyway, because what has common sense ever done for her?

That alone isn’t quite enough, though. A counterpart is well and good, but the darkness still needs definition.

Renko is no longer following her “Mary”, but still holding that hand. She looks at her with more interest than suspicion, and asks, “Who are you, really?”

The darkness’s smile grows wider. “Exactly!”

She steps closer, and Renko realizes she can now see her entirely, not in glimpses. Is she seeing double or is Mary also there?

“Give me a name,” says the darkness. “Define me.”

I’m not sure exactly what goes through Renko’s head, put on the spot like that. She looks into those eyes and sees as well. Maybe she’s frustrated (jealous, a little?) that she can’t be this for Mary. Maybe she’s glad that there is a role for her, anyway. Maybe she wants to learn. Definitely, it’s not only one of these.

She must have Mary on the brain, so Hearn becomes Yakumo through Mary’s long-ago namesake. For a first name… Her dress is a very nice shade of violet. Murasaki? No, Yukari sounds better.

Maribel steps out of the shadow, back into the airport lobby, leading Renko by the hand as if they’d never been separated. When they look up, they’ll see Yakumo Yukari leading Maribel by the other hand.

She takes Renko’s other hand as well and smiles at both. Such wonders she can show them. So much to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.  
> A special shout-out to my wonderful beta reader and friend, who will tolerate my intoxicated rants about esoteric lore and themes in frilly dress indie games.
> 
> This was certainly an experiment. I don't know that I'd consider it a successful one, entirely, but I stand by the themes and thoughts that inspired it. Maybe one day, I'll attempt to write another version.


End file.
